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Month: March 2017

Nathan Bedford Forrest’s critics have called him everything from a violent backwoodsman, illiterate redneck, and cruel slaver, to a crooked politician, unfaithful husband, and simple-minded hillbilly. However, traditional unreconstructed writers, like Southern historian and award-winning Tennessee author Colonel Lochlainn Seabrook, know that General Forrest was none of these things. In fact, he was quite the opposite, as is revealed in Mr. Seabrook’s classic work: Nathan Bedford Forrest: Southern Hero, American Patriot.

As we learn in this enlightening little book, far from being an inhumane slave owner and trader, Forrest granted most of his servants their freedom even before Lincoln’s War. Others he enlisted in his own command (half of dozen who served as his personal guards), then emancipated them in the fall of 1863 – the same year Lincoln issued his “military measure,” the fake and illegal Emancipation Proclamation (which freed no slaves in either the North or the South). Forrest never separated servant families, refused to sell to cruel slavers, and was even responsible for reuniting divided black families.

Unlike Lincoln – who throughout his life repeatedly blocked black civil rights and aggressively campaigned for American apartheid and the deportation of all blacks out of the U.S. – after the War Forrest happily hired back his original servants with full civil rights. Neither the founder or leader of the KKK as pro-North and New South historians disingenuously teach, Forrest closed the anti-Yankee organization down in 1869 when it began to take on racist overtones. These and many other captivating facts are presented clearly and concisely by Colonel Seabrook, a cousin of Forrest, in this rousing defense of the Wizard of the Saddle, one of the greatest, most inspiring, beloved, romantic, complex, and intriguing figures in American history.

Lavishly illustrated and written in an easy-to-read style, at 120 pages it’s perfect for Civil War museum shops, historic homes, or any tourist hot spot. Makes a great gift as well. Nathan Bedford Forrest includes 139 footnotes, a bibliography, and an index. Also available in hardcover. The foreword is by bestselling Southern educator James Ronald Kennedy, author of The South Was Right!

Civil War scholar Colonel Lochlainn Seabrook, a cousin of General Forrest, is the most prolific and popular pro-South writer in the world today. Known as the “new Shelby Foote,” he is a recipient of the prestigious Jefferson Davis Historical Gold Medal and the author of over 50 books which have introduced hundreds of thousands to the truth about the War for Southern Independence. He has penned nine books on Forrest, more than any other writer, and his screenplay of his Forrest biography A Rebel Born is being turned into a major motion picture. A seventh-generation Kentuckian of Appalachian heritage, Mr. Seabrook has a forty-year background in American and Southern history, and is the author of the international blockbuster, Everything You Were Taught About the Civil War is Wrong, Ask a Southerner!

His other titles include: The Great Yankee Coverup: What the North Doesn’t Want You to Know About Lincoln’s War; Confederacy 101: Amazing Facts You Never Knew About America’s Oldest Political Tradition; Confederate Flag Facts: What Every American Should Know About Dixie’s Southern Cross; Everything You Were Taught About American Slavery is Wrong, Ask a Southerner!; Give This Book to a Yankee: A Southern Guide to the Civil War for Northerners; and Honest Jeff and Dishonest Abe: A Southern Children’s Guide to the Civil War.

As the “gay moment” in Disney’s current box office hit Beauty and the Beast continues to shock evangelicals and social conservatives across America who have boycotted the film – believing it is kicking off an LGBT propaganda campaign – many do not realize that Disney has been aggressively promoting homosexuality for nearly two decades.

From The Little Mermaid animated sensation that hit theaters decades ago to the more recent Finding Dory and popular animated TV series Stars vs. the Forces of Evil, Disney has been promoting forms of homosexuality on the big and small screen – and even off the screen.

“They’ve come out of the closet with their propaganda efforts lately, as can be seen by their recent threat to pull filming in Georgia if the state backed a religious freedom bill,” Americans for Truth about Homosexuality (AFTAH) President Peter LaBarbera asserted in his column on LifeSiteNews.

Embracing and encouraging the homosexual lifestyle

However, even preceding the introduction of Disney World’s annual “Gay Day” in Orlando, Florida, the children’s entertainment giant has touted its promotion of LGBT lifestyles worldwide and companywide.

“But even in 1998, former Disney CEO Michael Eisner told a homosexual leader that a whopping 40 percent of the entertainment corporation’s employees were ‘gay,’ according to a prominent LGBT activist caught on tape relaying the private conversation at a homosexual student event,” LaBarbera reported.

For years, LGBT activists have recognized Disney as being at the forefront of normalizing homosexuality across the United States – including in its personnel.

“The revelation came from then-HRC [Human Rights Campaign] Executive Director Elizabeth Birch, who keynoted an LGBT student conference at the University of California, Santa Cruz,” the pro-family activist pointed out. “Eisner corrected Birch when she told him that 30 percent of his employees were homosexual.”

It’s well known that they reached the tip of the continent more than 1,000 years ago, but the full extent of their exploration has remained a mystery, writes historian Dan Snow.

After a long hike across boggy ground and through thick pine forests, clutching pepper spray to protect against bear attacks, Sarah Parcak and her small team of archaeologists stood on an exposed, wind-blasted headland in North America.

Exhausted but happy, they had been led to Point Rosee in Newfoundland by the most high-tech weaponry in the modern archaeological arsenal – satellite data captured 383 miles (600km) above the Earth. But once here they were back to using trowels and brushes. I joined them to see how this powerful combination of new and old allowed them to make what could be a seismic discovery.

We were here on the trail of one of the greatest maritime cultures of all time. We were here inspired by ancient chronicles which many have written off as fairy stories. We were here looking for Vikings.

In about 800AD Britain felt the fury of these men from the north. Portmahomack was one of Scotland’s most prosperous and important communities. On a protected bay in Easter Ross, on the edge of the Highlands, it was well placed as a waypoint for merchants, travellers and pilgrims moving along the east coast.

Recent excavations have given us a picture of a wealthy monastery at its heart. Scriptures were copied on to carefully prepared animal skin parchment by monks, skilled craftsmen created beautiful, jewel-encrusted religious ornaments, sculptors carved intricate Celtic crosses. Trade was the source of these riches, the sea brought wealth, but the sea also brought destruction.

Archaeologists have revealed that Portmahomack was suddenly and utterly destroyed. They found smashed fragments of sculptures mingled with the ashes of torched buildings. The settlement was wiped out. It is impossible to be certain but historians now think the most likely explanation is that it was attacked and looted. When I visited, a couple of months before the trip to Point Rosee, I held a piece of skull in my hand, presumably from a monk.

It had been shattered by a mighty blow, the sword’s blade left a deep gouge that makes the cause of death clear. Who were these men who slaughtered God’s servants and annihilated one of the oldest Christian sites in Britain? Almost certainly they were men who cared nothing for the Christian God, men who came in ships from the north and west, men who sought gold: Vikings.

The attack on Portmahomack is the only Viking raid in Britain for which we have archaeological evidence. Others, such as the attack on Lindisfarne at about the same time, echo only through the reports recorded in chronicles. Together these two violent raids mark the start of an era of attacks from across the North Sea. The Vikings or Norse exploded out of Sweden, Denmark and Norway, using hugely sophisticated navigational skills and shipbuilding technology as they pushed ever further into the wider world.

Vikings conquered Normandy in France – the land of the Northmen – even parts of Italy and the Levant. They also founded Dublin, made deep inroads into England and island-hopped across the North Atlantic. Orkney, Shetland, Fair Isle and Iceland.

They even crossed to Greenland, where I visited stunning Viking sites on the coast, dodging icebergs to get ashore. But perhaps their greatest achievement is the one shrouded in the most mystery. Did they get to North America? If so, was it a fleeting visit or did they colonise that distant coast too, centuries before Christopher Columbus?

The descendants of the Vikings left sagas – beautiful works of literature in which fact and fiction are often poetically intermixed. They clearly state that the intrepid Leif Erikson led an expedition to the east coast of North America. They describe good harbours, and an abundance of natural resources. One of the most fascinating mysteries in history is whether these can be believed.